Project Manager

Craftsman Design & Renovation / Portland, Ore.

  On creating standard practices:   Largely, carpentry is an experiential tradition passed down orally from carpenter to carpenter. You learn by doing, and you learn how to do it by someone showing you. But how do you make sure that your process is the same company-wide and that everyone is achieving the same results? And then how do you codify these processes without it being a stuffy document no one remembers? One of the answers I came up with is Workshop Wednesdays. Our lead carpenters facilitate a workshop for all the other carpenters on site, every week, for 20 minutes to an hour, where they demonstrate how and why we do things. These workshops pass knowledge from carpenter to carpenter, increase efficiency, and provide quality control on our work. By doing them every week with the entire company, we’re creating a living set of best practices that touches on all aspects of each project.